Diamond Jubilee: Music stars celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's reign

 

 

  Elton John sang "I'm Still Standing," Stevie Wonder crooned "Isn't She Lovely," and Paul McCartney sent "All My Loving" as musical royalty celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's 60-year reign with a concert outside Buckingham Palace on Monday. But the joy was tempered by news that the queen's husband, Prince Philip, had been hospitalized with a bladder infection.

Palace officials said the prince, who will turn 91 on Saturday, was taken to the King Edward VII Hospital in London from Windsor Castle on Monday as a precaution and will remain under observation for a few days.

As the Diamond Jubilee show ended, Prince Charles took the stage and encouraged concertgoers to make some noise for his father. The crowd responded with a roar and chants of "Philip."

The heir to the throne paid tribute to his mother, addressing her as "Your Majesty — Mummy" and leading the crowd in three cheers for the monarch.

Despite Philip's illness, many members of the royal family, including Charles, his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Princes William and Harry sat in a royal box to watch the show, performed on a specially erected stage outside the palace.

The queen was cheered as she arrived partway through the show, wearing a gold lame cocktail dress under a dark cape. It was decided before Philip's illness that she would watch only part of the concert.

The queen is not a noted pop music fan, and appeared to be wearing yellow ear plugs as she observed the concert.

Some 12,000 contest winners watched the show from an enclosed area, while a huge crowd stretched down the Mall, the wide boulevard leading up to the palace.

Is Britney Spears "Coming Undone" on the X Factor Set?

 

Quick, hide the umbrellas and electric razors, because we may be time-warping back to 2008.

A source told Us Weekly Britney Spears may be heading for another public meltdown after her rocky start as a judge on The X Factor.

"She gets extremely nervous and anxious," an insider says of the 30-year-old. "She's hard on herself and not very confident."
Spears' engagement to Jason Trawick may also be an added pressure. "For her, it's all an input as stress," the source explained. "This is a lot of change at once for Britney. She's coming undone."

But not everyone thinks Spears is heading towards another downward spiral. "Jason and Britney's family wouldn't let her do X Factor if she couldn't handle it," a second source told Us Weekly. "At first they weren't going to let her because she couldn't do live TV -- they didn't know what she would say. But they went over it with Britney, and they trust her."

X Factor creator and fellow judge, Simon Cowell, doesn’t seem concerned about Spears, either. Just last week, he dismissed rumours that Spears had walked off the set on her first day.

"There was no walking off," Cowell told E! News. "We have breaks every five or six songs. You can go have a cigarette, you can go to the loo. So as soon as anyone left their chairs, it was reported... that someone had left the show – and they hadn't!"

Despite the breakdown murmurs, Spears "wants to do a good job," the second source told Us Weekly.

"There is always apprehension about something you haven't done before, but she's looking forward to proving all the doubters wrong."

Drake's Deal With The Weeknd 'Being Worked Out'

The Weeknd has a ton of fans, but Drake may be the biggest fan of them all. Of course, there is some bias: Drizzy embraced the Toronto singer last year and has since worked with him on fan favorites like "Crew Love," "The Ride" and "The Zone."

The two have even brought their respective OVO and XO cliques together to form OVOXO. So what's the real deal with Drake and the Weeknd?

"As far as on paper, it's all being worked out, but that's not really what counts anyway. What counts to me is the fact that the affiliation is so known, and that's all I really care about," Drake told MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway during his May 17 tour stop in Houston.

Katy Perry Goes Makeup-Free in New Movie

Katy Perry is stripping down — in so many words — for her upcoming 3-D documentary Part of Me, in theaters this summer.

In a clip that aired last week on Ellen, fans were able to catch a glimpse of the Firework singer without any makeup on, as she prepared for a recent performance.


Remarkably, Katy, 27 — who has been glamming it up lately, at such recent events as the 2012 Billboard Music Awards — looked just as good dolled down as she does when she gets all dolled up on the red carpet. Whatever her secret is, we hope she’ll share it with us soon!

LMFAO Hope They Have The Movie Awards 'Anthem'

The right song can make a normal scene in a movie one that goes down as a classic, and pairing a scene with the perfect backing tune can shed new light on a song you thought you knew. So for the MTV Movie Awards, we honor the music that met the perfect movie and made the magic happen.

Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to cast your vote and make sure your favorite takes the stage this Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET to collect the Golden Popcorn.

Pepsi and Twitter Announce Global Music Partnership

Pepsi and Twitter today announced "Live for Now Music," a global music partnership that will bring people closer to the artists they care about and help them easily discover new music, all through Twitter.

Through this partnership, an extension of Pepsi's recently announced "Live for Now" global campaign, Twitter's more than 140 million users can listen to and discover more music through free weekly music downloads, music-focused original videos, and a series of pop-up concerts this summer and fall.

Music Review: Regina Spektor charms on latest album despite a couple of missteps

From the opening moment of “What We Saw from the Cheap Seats,” Regina Spektor enchants. On the first song, “Small Town Moon,” her beautiful vocal range is buoyed by rock-heavy interludes and coupled with uplifting lyrics that give the song a surprising amount of depth.

But there are a couple of missteps that momentarily detract from the album, on which she mines emotional territory covering love, loss and more.

“Oh Marcello” mixes beat-boxing and piano rather uncomfortably as Spektor borrows a line from “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” made famous Nina Simone; it’s interesting but it doesn’t really work. She regains her stride with “Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas),” where she shows she can sing as beautifully in French as in English.

The only weird moment is on “Open,” where the listener is subjected to a noise that sounds like Spektor being strangled; it’s odd and offputting, and misplaced here.